


Appease

by Severina



Category: Dark Harbor (1998)
Genre: Community: tamingthemuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:30:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boy drops his eyes to the floor, finally raises them to peer at David from beneath shaggy sweat-soaked bangs.  “You know what I want.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appease

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's tamingthemuse community, for the prompt 'appease'. Pre-movie.
> 
> * * *

The boy’s torso is long and lean and unblemished. Smooth and sleek, not a scar or a wrinkle. Young and fresh. David can’t resist reaching out to touch it, to touch him. Smoothes knuckles slowly from chest to the curve of his hip, reverses the motion with the tips of his fingers.

“I do,” he repeats. “I love you.”

The boy exhales a puff of smoke toward the ceiling, and David’s fingers stutter on his skin. He tries to pitch his voice light when he says, “I’ve asked you about smoking in the bed—“

And it’s the wrong thing to say, because the boy darts slitted eyes his way before reaching over to crush out the barely-lit smoke in the ashtray. He slides out from beneath the covers and stalks across the room, and David drinks in that firm young body, so completely unconcerned about nakedness when David himself won’t leave the bathroom after a shower without a robe firmly wrapped around him, tugging the belt tight, tight. But then David is not young and firm. David is not smooth and sleek. 

“I’m just—“ _thinking of your health_ , he thinks but doesn’t finish, because the boy is scowling at him now, fresh cigarette in hand, and then is turning away to yank at the old warped windowsill. The air is cold and bracing after the stifling heat of the apartment, after the things they did in this bed.

“Happy now?” the boy asks around his smoke. He leans his bare ass on the sill – never mind that there are neighbours across the alley, never mind that half the world can see.

“I just,” he begins again. Softly, softly. “I just want you to be healthy. I love you.”

The boy takes another long drag, lets it out slowly. Watches him, always watches. “Do you?” he asks.

“I want you to be happy.”

The boy drops his eyes to the floor, finally raises them to peer at David from beneath shaggy sweat-soaked bangs. “You know what I want.”

His frankness in everything is appealing and frightening in equal measure. It is everything Alexis is not. The boy’s eyes burn into him, cataloguing everything. 

David has to turn away from that look, fiddles with the worn blanket. He tries to remember a time when he was happy with Alexis, but it has always been a lie. He has always lived a lie. Only with the boy has he been able to find some semblance of freedom. 

His young man only wants the real thing.

“I love you,” he tries again.

“Then prove it,” the boy says, and somehow he has moved from the window to the bed while David mentally relived his life of lies, travels in Prague and Copenhagen and champagne dinners and strained smiles, all of it making him feel more dead inside with each passing day. The boy is bending over him, running a smooth unworked palm over his chest, fingers tangling in David’s chest hairs, tugging playfully. The boy leans down to nuzzle at his neck, and David can’t suppress a shiver at his hot breath, his grazing teeth.

“I just want you to be happy,” David repeats. Whispers against the soft shell of his young man’s ear.

“We’ll both be happy,” the boy answers as he leans up, shakes his hair out of his eyes. And he smiles.


End file.
